


The Shades of Rath Dínen

by Splix_Archive (splix)



Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 10:41:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4603692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/splix/pseuds/Splix_Archive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young scholar explores the ruins of Minas Tirith and discovers the unexpected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shades of Rath Dínen

**Author's Note:**

> For Govi, and Mooms, with love. I miss you.

*

 

She hadn’t many hours left in the day, she realized, squinting up at the unpolished steel bowl of the sky. Just enough time to collect a few more rubbings before the watery light disappeared altogether. She turned and smiled at her elderly guide. “I don’t mean to keep you much longer.”

The guide shrugged and took a pipe from his pocket. “Ah, it’s no trouble, lass. Not many come to see the place nowadays. ‘Tisn’t quite safe. Pity it fell to ruin so.”

“It is,” she said softly, caressing a smooth white pillar half-covered in dead climbing ivy. “A great pity indeed. What must it have looked like two thousand years ago? Lively, I’ll bet – singing and laughing and tradespeople crowding the streets. And the structures…they’re still beautiful.” She peered upward at a vast edifice made ethereal by delicate scrollwork and crowned with a white dome.

“Not enough coin to restore it all. Not nearly enough.” The old man lit his pipe and puffed.

She pulled her guidebook from the leather bag slung across her chest. “Just one more street before we head back, if I may? The map says the entrance is just ahead.”

The old man frowned. “Ah, now, lass, I don’t know that you want to visit that one. ‘Tis getting late, and….” He shrugged, clearly uncomfortable.

“I know. It’s the street of tombs. It’s not unsafe, surely?” She hid a smile at old men and their fancies. “It would help my researches immensely.”

“Nay, it’s not unsafe.” The old man paused. “Leastways, not in the way you think.”

“Not haunted?” she teased.

“Now, lass, I didn’t say that.” The old man grinned, revealing yellowed teeth. “But what if I told you it was?”

“It would be a precious thing indeed if I were to see a ghost,” she laughed. “Think what my teachers would say!”

The old man peered up the sloping cobbled street. “Well, now. I suppose there’s no harm in you going. Hurry, though. I don’t like being here after dark, haunts or no. You won’t mind if I stay here a spell and have a smoke?”

“Of course not. I won’t be long. It’s not locked?” She dashed up the street toward the entrance, not waiting for an answer, and pulled open the rusted iron gate, pausing a moment to admire its intricately swirled metalwork. Had human hands actually created such delicacy, such beauty? The carvings here and elsewhere in the abandoned city seemed otherworldly. And how had they made an entire city – and such an exquisitely beautiful one – without the benefit of modern tools? It was beautiful, no matter what anyone else said – crumbling, ancient, empty, she could see it for what it had once been. She imagined herself walking the streets while the city gleamed in its prime, towers upon towers of white lacework punctuated with brilliant color – banners and awnings and the city’s prosperous inhabitants.

She examined the entrance. There had been another door once, bronze and gold, called Fen Hollen, and the street itself was Rath Dínen, the Silent Street. The protective door was long gone, plundered more than five hundred years before, and the street itself ravaged by treasure hunters, though legend had it that the hunters never came away with illicit riches, for the dead guarded their own. A smile curved her mouth. A good story to frighten children, but the truth was probably closer to the mundane – the dead were buried simply, with few ornaments or jewels.

Still, a shiver coursed down her spine as she picked her way through the torn and neglected cobble. Silent was a fine name; the very stones seemed to absorb her footsteps, and the tombs on either side of the street loomed in intimidating fashion, as though prepared to refuse the yielding of even the smallest of their dead inhabitants’ secrets. They were splendid, even if half of them were damaged beyond repair; here and there a stern effigy glared at her from the depths of their mausoleums with sightless eyes.

“So grey,” she whispered, and frightened herself with the sound of her own voice. She shook herself firmly. “Ridiculous!” It was funny, the way childhood fears manifested when one was alone, in an unfamiliar place. But she wasn’t alone: her guide was just on the other side of the gate, smoking his pipe.

Half-longingly, she looked over her shoulder at the gate. Still there, with a low mist drifting round its curving iron edges. The sky had darkened, and clouds above seemed to threaten rain. She pulled her vellum book from her bag and took out a stick of charcoal. Before it got too dark, she would get rubbings on as many tombs as she could.

With a bold stride, she moved toward the tomb closest to her and consulted her book, balancing it atop the vellum book. None of the outer tombs were marked any longer; the inscriptions were far too weathered, the language far too archaic, the monuments poorly cultivated. There was a single large building nearby that held several individual tombs, but whether or not the sepulchers held former kings was a mystery. History had not retained the names of Minas Tirith’s dead.

This tomb was simple – a stone effigy atop a sepulcher. The carving was greatly eroded, but even so, she could see that whoever was buried in the tomb had once been a fine figure of a man. A straight, handsome nose and a strong jaw, high cheekbones – very fine indeed. Kingly, even. Gently, she touched the worn planes of his face, the long sword he clutched to his breast, the circlet on his brow. This one was a king – she was sure of it.

“All right, then,” she whispered. “Who are you?” She bent to look for inscriptions and found one, scarcely visible in the darkening day. Quickly, she knelt and made a rubbing, tucking it in her book.

There were two small tombs flanking the king’s – his children, perhaps? Little ones who hadn’t survived disease, possibly. She examined them, but the mist had reached her knees and the tombs were obscured. She glanced up at the sky: nearly dark. How had it grown dark so quickly?

“Damnation.” She moved to another tomb, this one a plain box with only the faintest carving atop it. She took another sheet of vellum and laid it on the tomb, and suddenly felt a cold chill, as if an icy hand had brushed the back of her neck.

Gasping, she whirled, but there was nothing there. A dry swirl of leaves blew against the king’s tomb and settled, disappearing in the mist. Now she was afraid, though there was nothing to fear. The street was tranquility itself, the world was quiet. She looked up at the dark sky and back at the mist around the king’s tomb.

The mist was moving, taking shape.

“Impossible,” she tried to whisper, but her voice stuck in a throat drier than sand.

Not impossible. The mist rose up in a column, coalesced, and elongated. Gradually, as if watching a statue carved by invisible hands, she saw the movement of an arm revealed, then another. Tiny drifts like dust blew away from a tall figure of a man – not the king. This man was different; his jaw longer, his nose more powerful, but he was comely nonetheless. Transparent, pale grey and stern like the stones surrounding him, and beautiful.

She didn’t believe in ghosts. She’d been practical all her life, hard-headed. But still, a whimper quivered in her chest, refusing to loose itself as the last of the mist drifted away and he was fully revealed. A cloak, a tunic, a sword at his belt, a shield on his back, sturdy boots, all rendered in palest transparent grey. He moved noiselessly to the tomb and knelt beside it.

 _Aragorn_.

Had he said that, or had she heard it in her head, as intimately as if he’d whispered it in her ear? She watched, and something passed beside her, swifter than sight, and glided to the kneeling ghost.

It was the king! And he too was grey and translucent, but as he touched the kneeling man’s back, a strange thing happened; their figures seemed to solidify, to gain the hues of life. The kneeling man turned and smiled, and rose to his feet. His hair was wheaten gold, his cloak a rich red, his tunic a paler red embroidered with gold. The king’s hair was dark, his tunic green, the circlet on his brow a metal of gleaming white, with a dazzling jewel at its center. The figures embraced; she heard the rustle of fabric, the creak of leather.

_Boromir...._

The two men kissed, lover-like. She heard the intake of breath, soft laughter from one of them.

Despite her fear, she took a step forward. “Please....”

The men turned and regarded her in silence. There was no menace in their posture, but she froze all the same. As she watched, the color began to bleed away, the texture of their clothing and skin becoming grey and transparent once more.

“Oh, no. Please don’t go.”

They watched her steadily, and their faces became kind, their eyes twinkling with gentle good humor.

_Go in peace, child, and leave the dead to the dead._

She backed away, and as she stared, their countenances dissolved, becoming drifting mist once more. Hastily, she turned tail and pounded down the cobbles until she reached the gate. She pushed it open and all but tumbled onto the outer road once more.

The old man was sitting on a stone slab, knocking the dottle from his pipe. “See anything interesting, lass?”

She wiped the sweat from her brow and took a trembling breath, ready to spill the entire story. The guide smiled, waiting patiently, and shielded his eyes as the setting sun slid momentarily from behind a pile of dark clouds. She stopped and peered over her shoulder at the sloping street to the gate. “I managed to get a rubbing,” she said. “It was quite dark, though. Hard to see.”

“That happens,” the old man said, getting to his feet with a soft grunt. “Pity you can’t come back tomorrow, eh?”

“With what I collected the past few days, I think I have everything I need. Besides, I doubt I’d go back to that street. I shouldn’t like to…disturb anything.” She frowned. The encounter was already starting to seem like a dream.

“Let’s see that rubbing, then.”

Obediently, she took it out and showed him.

“Ah, that’s a fine one. I’ve seen that tomb. Shame no one can read the language any longer, isn’t it?”

She nodded and carefully folded the vellum, tucking it in her book. As she started down the sloping street once more, she murmured, “I know what it says, though. Aragorn.”

Behind her, the old man smiled.

 

End.

[](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/splix/media/ttt0974-1.jpg.html)


End file.
